Lady Eskside and Mary looked at each other--the one with a little triumph, the other with horror and dismay. It was my lady whose face expressed the latter sentiments. She had constantly refused to believe that Val had ever “thought twice” of Sandy Pringle’s daughter. Even now she assailed Mary indignantly, as soon as Valentine’s back was turned. “What did you mean by giving me such a look? Do you mean that a boy like that cannot think of a girl he has known all his life without being in love with her? My dear Mary, that is not like you. I was laughing myself, I confess,” said the old lady, who looked extremely unlike laughter, “at the idea of their yellow ribbons on Vi’s yellow hair. The little monkey! setting herself up, forsooth, as a Liberal; I’m glad the colours are unbecoming,” Lady Eskside concluded, with the poorest possible attempt at a laugh.
Mary made no reply--but she was much more prepossessed in favour of Val than she had ever been. Women like a man, or even a boy for that matter, who betrays himself--who has not so much command of his personal sentiments but that now and then a stray gleam of them breaking forth shows whereabouts he is. Mary--who had taken Violet under her protection, determined that not if she could help it should that little girl fall a victim, as she herself had done--was entirely disarmed by the boyish ingenuousness of his self-disclosure. She thought with a half sigh, half smile, once more, as she had thought that summer day by the linn, that this boy might have been her son had things gone as they should--that he ought indeed to have been her son. Sometimes this was an exasperating, sometimes a softening thought; but it came to Mary on this occasion in the mollifying way.
“Don’t ask me anything about Vi,” she said to Valentine the same evening. “You know I never approved of too much friendship between you; she is your enemy’s daughter.”
“What do you call too much friendship?” said Val, indignantly. “If you think I am going to give her up because her old father is an old fool, and goes against us, you are very much mistaken. Why, Vi! I have known her since I was _that_ high--better than Sandy or any of them.”
“Her father is not so dreadfully old,” said Mary, laughing; “and besides, Val, I don’t put any faith in him; his opposition is a great deal more serious than you think.”